


Valerian

by harcourt



Category: Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Marvel Avengers Movies Universe
Genre: Bruce and the Hulk are not, Clint and the Hulk are buds, I wrote this for the kinkmeme, M/M, brief mention of suicidality, might be fluff, the whole situation kind of suggests past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:01:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harcourt/pseuds/harcourt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/7293.html?thread=13842045#t13842045">this prompt</a>, where Bruce starts to find Clint asleep in his room when he de-Hulks and is afraid he'll get smashed.</p><p>Clint has a sleep problem, but not a Hulk problem, even though Bruce thinks he <i>should</i> have a Hulk problem. </p><p>Bruce has a Hulk problem and a memory problem and a sleep problem. Or rather, a what the heck does Clint think he's doing when Bruce is asleep problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Valerian

The first time it happens, Bruce is convinced that he's killed Clint. All he can see is how boneless Clint is, eyes shut, face pale. It takes a while to realize where they are--in Bruce's own room--or how they got there. Or at least, how _Bruce_ got there. 

The day comes back in pieces. Flashes of _danger, anger, destroy_ and fleeting glimpses of objects flying past, smashing under his hands, his feet. In his jaws, even. And a foggy, fractured memory of catching Clint when he's thrown off his perch by an explosion. 

He doesn't remember what happ--what he _did_ , after that, and cold fear coils in his gut. He pictures the Hulk gripping Clint's injured body, remembers the Hulk's rage and what it could drive him to and is surprised Clint's in one piece. Literally in one piece. Imagines, a little shakily, the team trying to free Clint from his big hands and shudders. Says, "Clint?" but his voice is too low, like it can't quite choke it's way out of his throat.

Clint doesn't move, but he does take a deep breath and let it out in a long, easy sigh. His eyelid flutter a bit, and then he's still again, one hand curled by his face. He doesn't look dead. He looks _peaceful_ , and the relief clears Bruce's head enough that he can process more details.

Or, not details, exactly, but things like the should-be-obvious fact that they're in his room, that Clint's not dressed in his battle gear anymore but comfortably in a t-shirt that looks like he's nicked it from Tony--threadbare and black faded to gray and advertising some band whose music would probably set the Hulk off.

Clint wasn't dragged here by the Hulk. Clint's come here on his own. 

Bruce pokes him, and Clint jumps. Blinks muzzily, then startles upright and scrambles backwards until his back is against the wall. He looks like he's needing a moment to gather himself, too, and then he looks embarrassed.

"Somebody has slept in my bed," Bruce proclaims, "And she's still here." and is then unsure how familiar Clint is with fairy tales, because Clint has a propensity to be unfamiliar with all sorts of things Bruce had always just assumed were common knowledge.

"I ate your porridge, too," Clint says, and grins, but he still looks embarrassed.

"Are you--" Bruce starts, then stops because what he really wants to ask is _what the hell are you doing in my room_. 

"I'm fine," Clint says, and kind of skirts away along the wall until he can get his feet on the floor. "Sorry about falling asleep here. I was--" he pauses, long enough that it's suspicious, "making sure the Hulk was alright."

"The _Hulk_?"

Clint looks guilty now on top of the embarrassment, and that just doesn't match his story. "He was. You were. _He_ was taking a while to change back. Someone had to steer him to someplace safe."

"Oh?" Bruce finds his glasses and sets them on his face, but when he turns back, Clint is slipping out the door. 

"Sorry," he says, again, "I should have been gone by now." He exits backwards and pulls the door shut, saying through the gap, as it closes, "Won't happen again, Doc."

\-----

It does happen again, and Bruce has the same whirlwind of horror-confusion-relief-confusion as he comes to to find Clint sprawled over his couch like he's dead, impossibly loose limb-ed until he wakes and then he makes clumsy excuses again as he exits, all awkward apologies and promises to not repeat his invasion of Bruce's space.

\-----

"I don't _mind_ ," he tells Steve, brewing tea in the common kitchen while Steve leafs through the newspaper, studying every bit of it from the technology section to the funnies with the same studious air. "It's just that he's coming in when I'm the other guy. And when he's injured. He's going to get hurt, one of these days. He's going to get himself _killed_."

Steve turns the page, carefully, like it's an old and valuable book and scans the page for articles that seem familiar enough in topic for him to follow the gist if not the particulars. "What does Clint say?"

"Clint says it won't happen again, and then it does." Bruce shrugs, and watches his kettle, tapping his fingers on the counter as he waits for it to whistle, "He doesn't really hang around long enough for me to ask him anything."

And that's what's weird. Clint exits like he's been caught doing something shameful. Slinking out like a thief or an illicit lover who's overstayed.

He doesn't say that last to Steve. Steve might not be as naive as people assume, but he's also studying Garfield with a serious purse-lipped expression and that makes it harder to say words to him like 'illicit lover', even as a joke.

\-----

When he wakes up in rags to find Clint curled up asleep in the Hulk-safe room off the lab, he puts two and two together and shakes Clint awake, ignoring the way he gasps and winces at being jarred. 

" _What_ are you doing?" Bruce demands and tightens his grip so Clint won't beat his usual hasty retreat. "You're hanging around the Hulk _on purpose_. You're going to get killed. Do you have a _death wish_?" He feels a bit hysterical. All he can remember from his time as the Hulk is destruction and rage and he thinks this time he's ripped an entire truck apart for no reason other than that it was there and he was angry. 

"No," Clint says, sounding a bit taken aback by Bruce's panic "It's fine. He's not going to kill me." Bruce calms himself down and lets Clint's arm go.

"He _could_ kill you. What do you think you're _doing_? Why would you take such a stupid risk?" And for god's sake, Clint is _hurt_. Again. 

Clint--Clint's almost always injured when Bruce wakes to find him in his personal space.

"It's not a risk," Clint snorts, leaning back against the wall, and then looks down and frowns at his hands.

"Don't run," Bruce says, preemptively, "If I'm going to wake up semi-regularly and get a heart attack thinking I've smashed you, then I think I deserve an explanation." Clint hesitates, waffling on the verge of spilling the beans, and Bruce crosses his arms over his chest and moves subtly to block the exit.

"Oh, fuck," Clint says, and looks away. "It's _nothing_ , Bruce. I just. I couldn't sleep."

It makes no sense. 

"Get in the Hulk's way and you're going to end up sleeping for a very, very, very long time. If you get my drift." Bruce says, and then wonders, briefly, if Clint is suicidal. If he's somehow set off by getting injured. By not sleeping. Clint maybe reads it in his expression, because he gives a sarcastic snort.

"Doc--"

"If the Hulk kills you, Clint--" Bruce could never forgive himself. The team would probably never forgive him, either. Natasha might actually manage to find a way to destroy him, and that thought isn't a relief anymore, the way it would have been, once. 

"He isn't going to kill me, Bruce," Clint snaps, like he's had enough of Bruce's worry. Maybe like his own embarrassment has tipped over into annoyance, "He's my catch."

"Your what?" 

"My catch. When I get thrown off stuff." Clint grins a little, and yeah. Bruce has scattered memories of that. Just still frames, in bits and pieces and without much detail or context. It's a bit weird, that Clint has this whole thing with him that Bruce barely remembers, and even those broken up bits only come to him with effort.

"Oh god. Is that why you're always so banged up when--?" He imagines it again, that thought from the first time, of the Hulk catching Clint and refusing to let him go after. Crushing him.

"What? No." Clint actually laughs, then looks away. Says, "It's fine, doc. Hulk doesn't smush me." He glances over and makes a face, awkward and like he's admitting to something he would rather not, "Or he hasn't yet. At all. You don't have to worry."

"Clint--"

"It's fine, doc," Clint says, and gets to his feet. "This won't happen again," he promises, brushing past Bruce as he makes his way out.

\-----

For a while, it doesn't. Bruce wakes up back to being human and alone several missions in a row and he thinks maybe their weird conversation has put Clint off, stopped whatever it was that was going on. 

And then a mission goes sideways. 

Bruce knows because he wakes up in a wreckage. He's destroyed--whatever it is he's in. It looks like a SHIELD room of sorts, all steel walls and destroyed equipment. It looks like maybe a lab, or a tech room of some sort. Hulk must have just stumbled into it, recognizing things that would be familiar to Bruce.

"What the hell happened?" Bruce asks, to hear the sound of a voice--even if it's his own--and in case someone's listening over the comm system, assuming there is one and it's functional. 

There isn't one. Or at least, no one answers. 

And then, as he's casting about getting his bearings, he catches the glimpse of a prone figure and knows right away it's Clint, so he picks his way over. Calmer this time than the first, but still with an anxious twinge.

As always, Clint's asleep, dressed this time in a hospital gown, over too-big sweat pants, and laid out over a line of cushions that look like he's pulled them off a couch. There's no way now for Clint to pretend he isn't doing this on purpose, or just helping corral the Hulk. He's obviously broken out of medical and stolen clothes. Obviously made himself a bed here--of all places--when it would have been easier to just sack out practically anywhere else.

Bruce shakes him, but this time he doesn't wake. He just groans and mutters, then stills again. "Clint?" Bruce tries, and gives him another shake, then decides against waking him and makes himself comfortable on the end of Clint's makeshift bed instead and waits for him to wake up on his own.

"Why are you here?" he asks, as soon as Clint's eyes blink open, "You're obviously supposed to be in a hospital bed." _And how did you get in anyway_ runs a close second. Bruce doesn't need to check to know he's locked in and will stay that way until someone's freed up to check on him. Which will probably be a while, considering they're all likely on the hunt for Clint.

Clint scrubs at his face with the heel of one hand. "Couldn't sleep there."

"And it's better here?"

"No," Clint says, too tired and beaten up for his usual dishonesty and dodging, "It was better with Hulk." And then, like he's realized what he's said, "No offense, doc. You're great, too."

Bruce has to smile. "No offense taken, but--the _Hulk_?"

Clint makes an _mm_ sound, and repeats, "Couldn't sleep. Sorry, doc. I know I said--" That he'd stop showing up, but Bruce had stopped believing that promise awhile ago. Doesn't particularly want Clint to keep it.

"It's okay. I was just worried about the other guy. You're _hurt_."

"S'fine," Clint slurs, "Hulk's safe."

Bruce smiles at that, because whatever Clint means by it, it gives him a weird mix of relief and pleasure to hear that the Hulk isn't just a force of terror and destruction, even if it is just Clint's opinion, which has been known to be skewed before.

Clint sits up slowly, still looking shadowed around the eyes and wobbly. "They gonna let you out soon?"

"Probably when they finish looking for you," Bruce tells him and finally asks, "How the hell did you break in here?"

Clint just leans back against the wall and smirks.

\-----

"Next time you lose Clint out of his deathbed," Bruce says, "check where ever you have the other guy locked up."

"He's still doing that?" Steve sounds really amused and even leaves off decoding the mysteries of the Society section of the paper and frowning judgementally at the red carpet get-ups.

Bruce keeps fixing his tea and stirs in a bit of honey. Shrugs.

"Hulk threw me into a wall last week," Steve muses, with a thoughtful but not worried look. 

"Clint thinks he's not dangerous," Bruce huffs and Steve shrugs one shoulder before going back to frowning at some starlet's dress.

"He's not if you're Clint," he says, and looks like he's smiling at an in-joke.

It's actually a bit annoying, how the whole team has more insight into what Bruce gets up to when he's changed than Bruce does. He doesn't think of himself and the Hulk as one and the same, but the other guy still tears huge gaps in his life and he used to be glad to not remember, but now he thinks that what happens in those gaps might be kind of important after all. 

Or at least, important in a way beyond being horrifying and inhumanly destructive.

\-----

Bruce puts it all together when Clint goes on a SHIELD mission and comes home looking like he's been trampled by large animals and then left out in the weather. He hangs around the kitchen and the living room and the lab for so long that it's obvious he's not sleeping.

"If you stay up long enough," Tony whispers to Bruce, leaning over conspiratorially, "You start to lose your mind," and nods at Clint, who does look like he's kind of on the brink. There's no point in asking if Clint is alright, because he'll just lie anyway, so Bruce keeps his hands working and an eye on Clint.

When Clint doesn't sleep, he _really_ doesn't sleep.

"Go to bed, Barton," Tony calls, after Clint's been staring at a spot on the table top in front of him for maybe ten minutes, without moving, "JARVIS is scanning for the bogeyman, and Nat will probably check your closets for you if you ask her real nice."

Clint flips him off, but there's a look on his face for just a second that Bruce thinks means Tony's hit something right on the head. He goes after Clint and asks, "Why the Hulk?" and knows that Clint knows that he's pretty much figured the whole thing out.

"No one else can get near the Hulk," Clint says, flopped on the couch, dazed with exhaustion but wide awake, "It's safe to sleep."

\-----

"It's safe to sleep anywhere in my tower," Tony says, "I'm insulted."

Clint eventually drops off, but only because the need for sleep overpowers whatever it was that was fueling him. It's really more of a collapse than anything else.

"Paranoia," Tony declares, when Bruce mentions it later, with the obnoxious air of a shameless know-it-all, "Spies, you know how they are."

Bruce ignores it. Tony's in a hyper, say-random-things mood that probably means Tony's been up too long himself, but for very different reasons than Clint and most of those reasons having to do with Tony's lack of common sense. 

"He can't be up for nearly a week every time something goes bad." Bruce says, "He looked like hell."

Tony snaps his fingers a couple of times, in an impatient move-it-along gesture. "Presto change-o," he says and Bruce gives him a look for thinking it's that easy.

"For god sake, Tony. Go to bed."

"I need my cuddle bear. Cuddle Hulk." 

" _Tony_." Clint looked so embarrassed to be caught hiding out by the Hulk that the _last_ thing Bruce wants to hear is Tony's sleep deprived opinions on the matter. And anyway, it's not like he can justify changing just for Clint's sake. The danger is too great because no matter what friendship Clint has with him, the Hulk is still the Hulk and about as stable as explosives.

"What? I'm just saying. It's kind of cute, but in a sad I-have-no-people way."

Clint has people. Or he has Natasha, anyway, and the rest of them, but Bruce has to agree this once. It _is_ kind of sad. He doesn't doubt that part of the reason the Hulk is a sanctuary is because the Hulk won't talk and spread around the tale of Clint's vulnerability.

Which Bruce has now done anyway, in his ignorance and his hunting around about the whole business.

He's not going to be sorry. Clint could have been more forthcoming. It wasn't like he didn't know Bruce was terrified the other guy would hurt one of them one day. 

\-----

"Stay," he says the next time he wakes up and Clint is a drowsy trespasser in his room, blinking awake not long after Bruce comes back to his senses. "I'm not a Hulk, but I could be in pretty short order."

Clint gets that embarrassed look again, and Bruce reaches over to give him a pat. 

"The other guy ever smash Tony?"

Clint grins, "Sometimes. Today he threw a bicycle at him." 

Bruce doesn't want anyone to get hurt by the Hulk, but that doesn't mean he's above a bit of petty satisfaction. Clint smirks and sits up, which is usually the beginning of his beating a hasty retreat.

"Make a deal with me? I give you a key, you fill me in on the other guy." It's not like Clint _needs_ a key. Not as much as Bruce wants to fill the gaps in his memory, anyway. Or not at all, actually. Bruce is still puzzling over how he got into the tech room at SHIELD. Especially since he'd been as trapped there as Bruce, once he was inside.

Anyway, he means _key_ kind of metaphorically.

\-----

"It was a truck," Clint mutters, the next time, hazy and slurred. "You. Hulk threw it. Missed Steve. Thor had to hammer it to keep from getting smashed."

Bruce says, "Should you go back to medical?" He's still a bit stunned by the destruction he can wreak and come away unscathed. Not a scratch on him, when the rest of the team looks like they've been dragged behind a train for several miles.

"Might as well," Clint says, but makes no move to go. Bruce isn't entirely sure how mobile he is, right now, because Clint only shows up in his room or lab or some Hulk-cage when things are bad. When he's hurt or shaken or, once, when he'd just been up too many days in a row on a mission and couldn't come down from it.

"Or go back to sleep," Bruce says with a shrug, "or lie there while I make tea. Whichever."

Clint says, "Tony dropped me when we got slammed moving across to another building," and grins. It looks dopey. "So thanks for the catch."

Clint doesn't look like he's going anywhere, so Bruce tosses a blanket over him and pads towards his kitchen.

\------

Getting Clint to stay after he wakes is a start, but Bruce would rather not have the next step at all, because the next step involves Clint getting so badly hurt that he's laid up in medical. _Actually_ laid up.

"You're supposed to tell me what happened," Bruce whispers, keeping watch. Clint's asleep, but it's more drugged slumber than ease.

"It wasn't the Hulk," Steve says, sounding guilty, the way he always does when one of them gets seriously hurt, carrying the weight of it all on his shoulders, like every rabbit-brained scheme Clint or Tony--because it's usually Clint or Tony--comes up with is his responsibility.

"I know," Bruce says, because Clint's retellings have been helping him piece together the fragments he has left when he wakes up. They're still disjointed partial images, but he can often slot them together into some kind of shaky timeline now. Can shift through some of the jumble and figure out which flash of memory went with which. He knows the Hulk didn't catch Clint, because Clint didn't fall. Clint was caught up in some rooftop melee he wasn't nearly properly armed for. 

In either case, the Hulk wasn't there.

Which, really, is the problem with using the Hulk for security. The Hulk might be invulnerable, but Bruce--Bruce is the one who's _there_.

Or at least for about ninety percent of the time.

\-----

"So Project Sleepy Barton looks like it's a go," Tony says, bringing coffee and hanging about being a pest. Somehow, even though he was wearing the armor, his eyes are bruised and his chin scraped and no matter no much Bruce has improved at piecing together the fragments, they're still just fragments.

"Don't be an ass, Tony," Bruce says, because Clint's out like a light, but Bruce can't stand listening to something he knows Clint's embarrassed about being turned into a joke in front of him. "It's not a _project_. It's just."

"It's just you're in competition with the Jolly Green Giant over Hawkeye's affections," Tony says.

"I'm not," Bruce says. "That's ridiculous."

 _Because I am the green giant_ , he doesn't say, because he's not sure of it. He only has scattered bits of the other guy, and that's not really the same thing.

\-----

Thor comes and shoos Bruce out every so often, for hours, but Tony and Steve and Natasha come and go constantly. Or rather, come and get thrown out. Or Steve and Tony do, because they quibble like children still, when tensions get high, or when they're upset. They make him feel old, sometimes, even Tony. Make him imagine he can feel every shady hovel he's hunkered in over the years.

And that's really why, Bruce thinks, he's gone along with this whole Clint and Hulk thing so easily and stuck with it so long. Bruce might not understand feeling friendship and trust for the Hulk, but he understands hiding well enough.

\-----

Clint wakes up and blinks, then starts, and Bruce catches his shoulder quickly to stop him from working his way into an actual panic. "You're okay," he says, "You're in medical."

"Oh." Clint's quiet for a bit, and when he swallows drily, Bruce gets up to find him some water. Maybe call for some ice chips. "Why are you here?"

He's not sure what Clint means. The team always try to stay with each other when one of them is hurt, and with the imperviousness granted by the Hulk, that often leaves Bruce the one on bedside duty. He shrugs. Says, "You were out too long. You missed the other guy."

Clint's face scrunches, but it's not really like he's disappointed to see Bruce. After a moment, Bruce realizes that he's trying to uphold his side of the bargain, scraping together his memories of the battle. "I don't remember that much," he says, apologetically. "Sorry, Bruce."

Bruce huffs in exasperation. "That's fine, Clint. Welcome back."

Clint makes that _mm_ sound, and shifts around uncomfortably. "When can I get out of here?" he grouches.

"You've been unconscious for days, Clint. I think not for a while."

"But--" Clint subsides almost as soon as he starts the protest. It's just as well, since it's not like Bruce is a good target for complaints. He's not in charge of medical, after all. "You don't have to keep me company, you know. The Hulk thing--" _doesn't have anything to do with you_ , Bruce finishes to himself, and that might have been true, once, and might have been how Bruce would have preferred it, and continued to prefer it, except for this thing with Clint.

"--just stupid," Clint's saying, and Bruce blinks and adjusts his glasses.

"What?"

"The Hulk thing is stupid. You don't have to humor me," Clint sounds somehow offended. The way he does sometimes when the rest of them remember he's just human--which is surprisingly not that often, considering how frequently he gets hurt or has near misses--and get temporarily careful with him. There's a bitter edge to it that Bruce doesn't really understand.

He wants to deny that he'd been humoring Clint, but in a way he probably was. At least, in the same way that they humored Tony's rambling and Thor's lengthy stories and Steve's incurable homesickness, making time and space or filling it up, according to need.

It's not like Clint hasn't been humoring Bruce's need to fill in all the blanks in his life that were the Hulk.

"Go to sleep, Clint," he says, and Clint makes an annoyed sound, but after a few minutes, he does.

 _Project is a go_ , Bruce thinks in Tony's voice, and smiles to himself.

\-----

That's when things change, but Bruce doesn't actually realize until much later and then only in hindsight. Clint gets out early and against medical advice, because Clint has things he does in his own way. Stubbornly and insistently in his own way, and woe to anyone who tries to stop him.

So Bruce doesn't, even though he thinks it's stupidity. That Clint could stand a few more days of monitoring and bed rest. He wouldn't get in Clint's way, but he would share his opinion, except he doesn't see Clint for a while. 

Doesnt, actually, see Clint again till they go out on a mission without him--because Steve is as insistent on _totally healed_ as Clint is on _I'm fine_ \--and Bruce wakes up tucked under the covers in his own room, with Clint sitting nearby, legs pulled up into Bruce's big reading chair, head leaning on his hand in what would look like a thoughtful pose if he didn't look so sleepy and he wasn't Clint.

"Haven't got a story for you, doc," he says, "this time." 

Everything looks too tidy for Clint to have followed the Hulk up, and Bruce says so. Clint grins. "Thor brought you up. You passed out on the transport."

 _Why are you here then?_ Bruce would ask, but he thinks it would sound cruel. Like he's not happy Clint's there.

And he is, so he doesn't say anything.

\-----

Everything goes on in the same way, for a while, until Clint gets called out on SHIELD business and doesn't come back for days and days. There's no word for longer than they'd expected, so Steve stews and draws and Tony builds wilder and more improbable contraptions while Natasha exudes patience and bristling threat at the same time. Somehow.

None of it, of course, hurries anything up, so Bruce does what he always does, which is stay calm and make tea and breathe and listen to soothing music. His life, it seems, sometimes, is dedicated to his fear of the Hulk. Even his worry is filtered though _don't get excited don't get upset don't for the love of god get angry_. 

And the realization of that makes him frustrated, which very nearly makes him angry, so when Tony invites him to watch movies where things shriek and blow up, he says yes. Just because. Startlement isn't anger, after all and he can always leave if it's too much.

And that's where he still is when Clint comes home--sunk into the couch cushions, half asleep and half watching the static hissing on the TV screen, alone because Tony had long since gone, probably back down to the lab.

"Hey," Clint says, dropping his bags as he comes over, right where they'll be a tripping hazard. He looks like he's been up for days and maybe not eaten for about half of them, but at least he doesn't look hurt beyond a smattering of bruises.

If it had been an Avengers mission, Bruce would maybe have been the Hulk still. He looks at Clint and thinks of the near week that Clint didn't sleep after that one time, before, and frowns, but Clint just flops onto the couch next to him and drags his feet up onto the cushions, folding himself up.

Bruce tries to think of something to say, but it's not the same situation as usual. Clint being there when Bruce comes to calls for a different set of actions and words than this, and he's still figuring out what to do with it when Clint's head thumps against his shoulder. Bruce looks down to ask if he's alright, then doesn't. 

Clint's fast asleep.

Bruce smiles. There's no break-in and no Hulk story. Whatever this is, it's not a part of their deal. It has nothing to do with the Hulk at all. He's just _Bruce_ right now and it seems to be good enough.

It's just as well, since it's Bruce who's _there_. Or at least, for about ninety percent of the time.


End file.
